Scott Huddleston: Jury’s message came at a price

The first time I saw Sgt. Leonardo Treviño, he was in handcuffs and leg shackles at Fort Hood, during his Article 32 hearing in December.

As you probably know, Treviño and Sgt. 1st Class Trey Corrales, both graduates of Burbank High School in San Antonio, have been found not guilty of premeditated murder in separate incidents in Iraq.

A very important difference between the two cases is that Treviño was held in confinement, first in Kuwait and then at the Bell County Jail in Belton, for more than four months. That’s four months of his life that he’ll never get back.

One thing that’s kept him from turning bitter is the fact that, unlike some of his friends, he wasn’t killed or seriously wounded during his two tours of Iraq.

“At least I was able to make it back home,” Treviño, who’s about 6-foot-1 and 230 pounds, said in a soft voice after being acquitted by a military jury last Thursday at Fort Hood.

What might have seemed a strong case against him unraveled during his four-day court martial. It initially appeared that after a gun battle in the village of Thura last June 26, there were credible witnesses who saw Treviño shoot a badly wounded insurgent in the stomach, then order a medic to suffocate him. Witnesses said he told a soldier to put an Iraqi pistol by the body to cover up the crime, then fired a second round into the man’s head.

It took a determined defense attorney named Richard Stevens to pick the government’s case apart. As in the Corrales case, Treviño’s family held fund-raisers and relied on groups such as United American Patriots and the Military Combat Defense Fund to give the sergeant the best possible defense. The Defense Fund supplied at least $10,000, Treviño’s family members said.

Stevens has been living in Killeen while preparing for trial. Assisted by two co-counsels, Capt. John Koch and Capt. Matthew Fitzgerald, he identified these soft spots in the government’s case:

— An aerial map of Thura that prosecutors presented, showing the site of the gun battle and the fatal shooting, based on one soldier’s recollection, was inaccurate.

— A photo of the dead insurgent showed blood on the forehead but no bullet hole. Since he had been beaten by U.S. and Iraqi soldiers, the photo didn’t link the blood to Treviño.

— Witnesses discredited the soldiers testifying against Treviño. One of his key accusers was called “not truthful,” and all of them were said to have resented him for making them do push-ups, butterfly kicks and other forms of “corrective training” that were approved by his superiors. Treviño had booted most of them out of his section for sub-par performance after the incident — a risky move, Stevens argued, if indeed they had knowledge of a crime he’d committed.

— The jury never heard from soldiers who had appeared at Treviño’s evidentiary hearing, including the one who placed the alleged throw-down weapon, and another who’d written at length in his journal about how he wanted to kill Treviño. Soldiers didn’t report possible wrongdoing to the platoon commander until Aug. 25, nearly two months after the incident.

— Testimony suggested an Iraqi pistol, the alleged drop weapon, was planted in Treviño’s room at FOB Normandy after he’d been removed from the camp and placed in custody. A sergeant found the pistol in an assault pack. But Mickey Nogle, special agent with the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division, testified that he and another investigator had thoroughly searched the room about three weeks earlier and found nothing — not even a backpack or assault pack.

“I found it kind of strange there was an assault pack all of a sudden in the room now,” Nogle said.

Treviño testified for more than three hours about what had happened on June 26. A soldier had put an Iraqi pistol by the body, but Treviño said he picked it up and told the soldlier to put it away. The medic had joked about suffocating the man so the team could wrap up its mission and return to base, but nothing like that occurred in his presence, he said.

Treviño said he fired his rifle at the man during an intial moment of confusion, when someone said “watch it” and something about a gun, while several people were in the room. Later, while he and the medic were the only ones present, he said he saw the insurgent’s arm jerk out of the corner of his eye. He fired with his M-9 pistol, but didn’t know if he hit the man.

After closing arguments, the jury, whose members had all served in Iraq or Afghanistan, opted to go straight into deliberations, rather than taking a break. In about an hour, less time than it took the military judge, Col. Gregory Gross, to give them their instructions, they returned with a verdict: not guilty on all charges.

Days later, I’m mindful of one point Stevens made during his two-hour summation. I can’t recall his exact words, but he essentially said that if we all get into the business of second-guessing the split-second decisions soldiers make in battle, we might as well have a folded flag ready to hand their families at military funerals, because soldiers are going to hesitate.

After the trial, Stevens said he was worried that if Treviño returns to Iraq for a third tour, he may remember his ordeal and delay when faced with danger.

“Hesitation is death over there,” he said.

In the end, the verdict in Treviño’s trial suggests that a military jury takes a sympathetic view of the life-or-death decisions soldiers have to make.

“But having to go through a jury trial is not the way you want to get the message,” Stevens said.